|
|
Don’t Think Outside the Box—Rethink the Box Itself
What is Design Thinking, and why should you care?
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
Design Thinking was first mentioned in 1969 by cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon. Design Thinking aims to center human needs while finding creative solutions to big problems in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
As the world becomes more globalized, humanity faces ever more complicated challenges with a dizzying array of angles to consider, stakeholders to involve, and concerns to alleviate. An outcome that’s preferable for one group might disadvantage another, hinder the success of an entire industry, or cause unintended consequences that create a whole new set of problems down the road.
In other words, no problem exists in a vacuum, and neither does its solution. In a world made up of people, systems, and forces that interface and impact each other, problems are not simple and static, but multi-faceted and dynamic. It’s no wonder many of our problem-solving approaches fall flat. Because Design Thinking freely acknowledges the interconnectedness of people and problems, collaboration, empathy, and curiosity are essential to finding solutions.
Design Thinking applies to all industries, settings, and challenges. Whether you’re an architect, engineer, entrepreneur, psychologist, lawyer, or designer of any kind--it doesn’t matter. You’ve likely come across problems in your industry that aren’t neatly contained but span personal and professional contexts, involve people and systems, and extend to other fields. That’s why many titans of industry, such as Google, Apple, and Airbnb, utilize Design Thinking approaches to solve problems for their users and customers.
Design Thinking lies at the intersection of user desirability, economic viability, and technological feasibility. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, “Design Thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown.”
Empathize--Dig into the human experience
Empathy is the foundation of Design Thinking’s human-centered approach to problem-solving. Put your own experience of the world aside and dive deep into your clients’ or users’ needs and desires. User research helps you see the issue through the eyes of the people impacted directly. It allows you to let go of your assumptions and understand the intricate and often surprising reality of the problem.
Define—What is the core problem and the resulting human need?
Aggregate and analyze the user data you’ve gathered and the observations you’ve made. What are your customers’ pain points? Frame the information you have collected into concise and specific problem statements. You can also create personas or avatars--a representation of a person impacted by this problem--to maintain a human connection to the people whom your solution will help.
Ideate—Question your assumptions and commit to curiosity
Generating disruptive ideas works best in an environment and team where nothing is off the table. Curious, open minds are the prerequisite, and letting go of preconceived notions is a requirement. This freedom to not only think outside the box, but to reconsider the box itself, is firmly grounded in the real-world experience and data you’ve gathered in the previous two phases. Time to brainstorm your heart out, entertain outrageous ideas, and think through angles and alternatives.
Prototype—Draft, build, or design tangible solutions
Play mad scientist in the lab and experiment freely. In this phase, you create practical solutions for the theoretical problems you’ve identified. Prototyping should be inexpensive, so you can move on quickly if your first or 17th iteration doesn’t work out. Sometimes that means only prototyping the main features of a proposed product, so you can test those before committing to a path. Other times it means using cost-effective prototyping techniques such as paper prototyping to keep the process agile and low-pressure.
Test—Try out your prototypes
In this phase, you test your prototypes to determine how well your solution performs in real-life situations. Even though this is the final phase, it frequently becomes the jump-off point for another round of creative discovery. Because Design Thinking is an iterative process, you rarely work through the stages only once. The results of the first testing phase often redefine further problems to solve. You’ll continue to alter, adjust, and refine until you’ve ruled out all the solutions that didn’t quite work and find the one that does.
More than sequential phases, think of these five components as modules that sometimes run parallel and often require several rounds of iterations. Design Thinking is exploratory, meaning you can hone in on the core of a difficult problem that’s hard to pinpoint or distill into a few sentences. Design Thinking works so well, because it addresses situations from both ends by identifying and defining all the parts and angles of the problem, while simultaneously finding imaginative ways to solve it.
At Alawi Global Studio, we strive to remain open and curious, putting our assumptions aside, and adopting a beginner’s mind. We see complexity and ambiguity as opportunities that beckon us to step off the beaten path and blaze our own trail.
- Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO
Design Thinking was first mentioned in 1969 by cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon. Design Thinking aims to center human needs while finding creative solutions to big problems in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
As the world becomes more globalized, humanity faces ever more complicated challenges with a dizzying array of angles to consider, stakeholders to involve, and concerns to alleviate. An outcome that’s preferable for one group might disadvantage another, hinder the success of an entire industry, or cause unintended consequences that create a whole new set of problems down the road.
In other words, no problem exists in a vacuum, and neither does its solution. In a world made up of people, systems, and forces that interface and impact each other, problems are not simple and static, but multi-faceted and dynamic. It’s no wonder many of our problem-solving approaches fall flat. Because Design Thinking freely acknowledges the interconnectedness of people and problems, collaboration, empathy, and curiosity are essential to finding solutions.
Design Thinking applies to all industries, settings, and challenges. Whether you’re an architect, engineer, entrepreneur, psychologist, lawyer, or designer of any kind--it doesn’t matter. You’ve likely come across problems in your industry that aren’t neatly contained but span personal and professional contexts, involve people and systems, and extend to other fields. That’s why many titans of industry, such as Google, Apple, and Airbnb, utilize Design Thinking approaches to solve problems for their users and customers.
Design Thinking lies at the intersection of user desirability, economic viability, and technological feasibility. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, “Design Thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown.”
Empathize--Dig into the human experience
Empathy is the foundation of Design Thinking’s human-centered approach to problem-solving. Put your own experience of the world aside and dive deep into your clients’ or users’ needs and desires. User research helps you see the issue through the eyes of the people impacted directly. It allows you to let go of your assumptions and understand the intricate and often surprising reality of the problem.
Define—What is the core problem and the resulting human need?
Aggregate and analyze the user data you’ve gathered and the observations you’ve made. What are your customers’ pain points? Frame the information you have collected into concise and specific problem statements. You can also create personas or avatars--a representation of a person impacted by this problem--to maintain a human connection to the people whom your solution will help.
Ideate—Question your assumptions and commit to curiosity
Generating disruptive ideas works best in an environment and team where nothing is off the table. Curious, open minds are the prerequisite, and letting go of preconceived notions is a requirement. This freedom to not only think outside the box, but to reconsider the box itself, is firmly grounded in the real-world experience and data you’ve gathered in the previous two phases. Time to brainstorm your heart out, entertain outrageous ideas, and think through angles and alternatives.
Prototype—Draft, build, or design tangible solutions
Play mad scientist in the lab and experiment freely. In this phase, you create practical solutions for the theoretical problems you’ve identified. Prototyping should be inexpensive, so you can move on quickly if your first or 17th iteration doesn’t work out. Sometimes that means only prototyping the main features of a proposed product, so you can test those before committing to a path. Other times it means using cost-effective prototyping techniques such as paper prototyping to keep the process agile and low-pressure.
Test—Try out your prototypes
In this phase, you test your prototypes to determine how well your solution performs in real-life situations. Even though this is the final phase, it frequently becomes the jump-off point for another round of creative discovery. Because Design Thinking is an iterative process, you rarely work through the stages only once. The results of the first testing phase often redefine further problems to solve. You’ll continue to alter, adjust, and refine until you’ve ruled out all the solutions that didn’t quite work and find the one that does.
More than sequential phases, think of these five components as modules that sometimes run parallel and often require several rounds of iterations. Design Thinking is exploratory, meaning you can hone in on the core of a difficult problem that’s hard to pinpoint or distill into a few sentences. Design Thinking works so well, because it addresses situations from both ends by identifying and defining all the parts and angles of the problem, while simultaneously finding imaginative ways to solve it.
At Alawi Global Studio, we strive to remain open and curious, putting our assumptions aside, and adopting a beginner’s mind. We see complexity and ambiguity as opportunities that beckon us to step off the beaten path and blaze our own trail.
